Pros
- The engineers and scientists are top-notch, and the projects are often new and original. - Some of the managers I had there were wonderful both as managers and as technical contributors. - The work-life balance is entirely reasonable.
Kontras
Senior management refuses to make any decisions, either changing their minds every few months or just refusing to commit to anything specific. Some projects run on life-support for years and years despite making no progress; other promising ones get cut after a few months because their executive sponsors lost a turf war. Specifications change all the time on the whims from management, often requiring starting from scratch. The company hired very aggressively one year, then realized they overcommitted and instituted a hiring freeze the next. They set up a satellite office in Westborough but never bothered to move any significant projects or teams there, so it's mostly empty. They have literally no space left in the North Reading location, but they have no plans to expand or relocate despite having talked about it for years. They continually talk about bringing more research projects from Amazon to Amazon Robotics, but they refuse to put any staff or funding on them.